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The MOST beautiful PowerPoint animation ideas, please download these ASAP!
The title of this blog post is the subject line of an e-mail I sent to my entire team just this morning. Microsoft announced this amazing new useful set of sample PowerPoint 2007 slides that will blow you away. You too should download them ASAP! They wisely hired Julie Terberg to develop several sets of designs and animations that are so out-of-the-box that I’ve asked my team to deconstruct them and report back to me how we can use these ideas in our own work. I met Julie a few years ago at the PPTLive conference. She is a rare blend of passionate communicator, brilliant designer and has very rare visual problem solving skills.
She graciously took time from her busy schedule to answer a few questions.
ND: Your work is very beautiful and I’ve admired it for years. You deserve to have built this great tool! How did you determine what features you wanted to share and then how did you come up with the design examples to explain them?
JT: The PowerPoint Content Publishing Team at Microsoft approached me with this project idea. They knew they wanted to share design examples with users, showcasing the effects available in PowerPoint 2007. We discussed a few specific categories to focus on: text effects, picture effects, graphic effects, and so on. And then they gave me creative freedom. Much of my initial time on the project was spent exploring the tools, testing and playing with settings. Many of the final effects were the result of this play time. I knew great photography would be essential to the project and we were so fortunate to have access to a library of images provided by Bill Staples. His gorgeous photos were very inspirational to the design, color palettes, and emotional tone for many of the effects.
ND: Out of the entire library, which ones do you feel stretched your creativity and PPT prowess the most and why?
JT: The examples produced while experimenting resulted in some happy accidents such as “Diffused arches”, “Wire outline rectangles and angles”, and “Frames with faded pictures and text”. It was great to be surprised by the results when pushing the settings.
ND: This question is a bit of a departure from the topic of the templates. Your presentation work is beautiful! If you could give us three tips for creating meaningful slides, what would they be?
JT: 1) Step away from your computer. Observe professionally designed graphics all around you: on signage, packaging, billboards, posters, and other media designed to quickly convey information. Strive for the simplicity and clarity of these media in your presentation designs. 2) Start with a pencil and paper to develop new graphic concepts. If it doesn’t communicate on paper, it won’t be any better on a slide. 3) Great photography can take your presentation to the next level. Invest in a library of professional images or hire a photographer for a specific need.
ND: Thank you Julie for making our presentation world a more meaningful and attractive place!
Back to TopTopic: Design
Tags: Design, Interview, presentation
- COMMENTS (32)
Same issue for me. Has anyone on a Mac had success? Does anyone have the ability to repost the files?
These look great – but I can’t download them on a PC, either.
I’ve clicked about 83 times and installed some unnecessary new plugins, and said “cancel or allow” a few times for good measure.
Typical Microsoft, overly complicating something as simple as a download link!
Same issue as Steve L – just lost another 45 minutes of my life to MSoft with nothing to show for it.
Hello,
I heard all of the podcast but I did not find the one you could mean (in which is the issue was discussed). Do you know if there will be a solutions for the issue from Julie? The templates look very nice but Apple user can not donwload them. I can not download them with a installed Office 2003 unter vmware on my Mac.
Same issue with my Mac. Couldn’t download the example templates from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/CT103366151033.aspx
I love and appreciate your enthusiasm for this project! I wish the files were available to all ppt users.
The cross-platform issues are a shame. The potx files are viewable with mac ppt 08, however the instructions would all have to be rewritten and the motion paths are impossible.
My inner Mom wants to make everything better, resolve the conflicts. Share.
I can only be hopeful for future changes.
Dear Julie,
is their a possibility to get your templates in a zip archive. I have a lot of problemes to download the files from the microsoft website. I use the Office 2007 PowerPoint player to watch them.
Wow, so many problems!!??
I have an expired PP2007 trial and
can watch this ppt’s with no problem.
By the way Julie, this template FX are interesting but, you know a funny thing? I’ve been doing this kind of pre-costumized FX for long time and with… PP2002!
These are all technical master pieces with very detailed documentation, great job!
As with all things design/art, some effects I like a lot, others less. My favorites are actually in presentations 7 and 8, especially:
- The effects on huge 3D text (”20th Century Fox movie star”t)
- The “slow zoom/motion” of a picture scrolling very, very slowly in a box.
To download them I had to “give in”: run IE7 on a PC and that’s it….
Thank you Julie.
Now, is this irritating or what. I do have MS PPT at home, but could not download the files because I use Firefox (bizarre). “No problema,” I figured “I’ll do it at the office”.
Nope, can’t do it. I hate to be this guy, but shame, shame on you, MS. I did (and so did my company) pay you a load of money, just to be treated like this.
It’s also another one of those subtle pushes to get everyone using Internet Explorer again. If you click on one of the plusboxes in the help section on the page, it says, and I quote:
+ If your Web browser does not support ActiveX controls
We recommend installing Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5.5 or later so that Office Online templates automatically download and open for you.
* If you have Internet Explorer 5.5 or later installed, start the program and then return to the preview page for this template and download the template.
* If you don’t have Internet Explorer installed, visit the Microsoft Internet Explorer page to download and install it.
What is it that makes the Internet so successful? Open access to information, and freedom of choice. Obviously Microsoft refutes this concept wholeheartedly 
Just let us download the templates guys!
Nice. Very Nice. I love this blog. Thanks for sharing Nancy.
P.S. Downloaded without a hitch.
These are inspirational! I downloaded them over the weekend and have already used them for some creative ideas! Thanks Julie for sharing your wonderful work–I hope to see more of it! And thanks, Nancy, for highlighting such a treasure!
The headline for this post didn’t disappoint. I’m working on closing my jaw 
P.S. Your link to Julie’s site somehow got merged with the post URL.
Great questions, Ms. Duarte, and three BRILLIANT steps from Ms. Terberg that are true in almost any eye/brain interaction/presentation. Many thanks ~
You can see other ideas about animations and interaction here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzy-3nQZ1P4
I call it “slidetouching” and I think it can be very useful to get the attention of the audience during a presentation.
Thanks so much to both of you for sharing such inspirational pieces and for being so generous with your knowledge. I look forward to trying to get my company out of the mindset that all animation is bad. If used incisively and effectively, as exhibited here, they can be a fabulous tool! I look forward to using some of these effects in an upcoming conference!!!
This was fantastic. I never knew that Power Point could be so beautiful out of the box. I’m still picking myself up off the floor. Thanks a million times over for sharing such fastastic stuff.
Is there someone out there who would please donate their time to downloading these and tossing them in a zip file for those of us having trouble? I would very much appreciate the effort!
Way to fail, Microsoft. Are these templates so invaluable that we have to be handicapped by Microsoft’s validation procedures just to download them, let alone to try to use them? I use a Mac and Safari, sometimes Firefox, and so Microsoft disregards me as a customer by not even allowing me to download the files. What nonsense.
There’s one really simple solution to all these Mac problems:
Use Apple Keynote. It’s so, so much better than PowerPoint, and worth every cent.
I agree with Chris. Keynote rocks – much easier to use and so intuitive. As for producing a cinema quality presentation, hand down Keynote.
Plus it’s cheap.
Was anyone able to download these templates from a MAC? If so how? I’d like to get a copy of them. Thanks.
OK, doesn’t look like many folks have had luck with D/L these for the Mac. That’s because you cannot do so directly. I have Parallels installed on my MBP and D/L these via Win/XP … I know, not much of a solution.
This is a problem with Microsoft not acknowledging that Mac:PowerPoint even exists; personally I believe that MSFT knows it exists *but* why go through the effort when Mac folks would sooner use Keynote.
Now, I’ve D/L these and I have to say that they are indeed impressive. Nancy, thank you for posting the link. What I find ironic, however, is that I followed this link from a Garr Reynolds presentation (he uses Keynote) that Nancy also has on this blog.
The theme of that presentation–Simplicity. I’ve looked at the directions included with these slides to achieve the effects indicated. The directions remind me of a Frank Lloyd Wright quote:
“Even for expert users things should be simple”
These effects are not for the faint of heart!
Regards,
Guys
I’m late to the party, but having downloaded these templates to see what they had to offer I am really struggling to see why anyone looking to craft a slick, dynamic presentation would want to use the effects on display here. I can see a huge amount of work has gone in to creating the custom animation but when would you really wish to use them?
The effects on show represent everything that is abhorrent about PowerPoint and in the wrong hands I think a presentation employing many of these could be a disaster.
Have you ever seen a Duarte slide looking like any of this? C’mon!
Thanks
Get Template without Active X
will try to automatically install (when it can’t it will give you a choice of) Rety or continue
choose “continue”
Scroll all the way to the bottom of the new page “template download problem”
“To download this template manually without solving this problem” there’s a download button for a .cab file (its a compressed file can be open with winzip or other compression programs)
Running a Mac with both Office 2004 and 2008 here – so a considerable amount of dollars paid for my software – and my software provider won’t let me download materials from their website?
Put ‘em in a .zip and let me worry about whether they work with my service packs or not. This is yet another example of why I am migrating all of presos over to Keynote.
Puerile, ridiculous, indefensible.
I am a Mac user, using Safari, and I got to a page that says that my OS is not supported. I scrolled down and found this:
“If you are using a Macintosh operating system, you will need a third party utility like the free StuffIt Expander to extract the template from the compressed file.”
And a “download” button. It worked, I got a .cab archive, Stuffit Expander took care of it. I am a happy camper.
It would have been nice to have had a little video of how each of the templates look in action like you see at Keynote Pro or Keynote Theme Park. I did find the technique of using the Presenter’s notes as a step-by-step tutorial interesting.
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Matthew McCullough
December 16th, 2008
6:08 pm
I own and use PowerPoint:mac 2008, but am not allowed to download these templates via this link, even though they are compatible with my version on the Mac. The download site strictly requires IE and an ActiveX control to download them. Bizarre piracy prevention lockout policy for paying Microsoft customers that just happen to be on the other platform. Fail!